Wish You Were Here by Nick Webb Page B

Christopher doted on her. She was the apple of his eye.
    Meanwhile, in the other part of Douglas’s family life, he and his sister continued to live with their mum, their granny, the slowly dying granddad, and a floating population of sick animals. Every weekend, however, Douglas and Sue went to see their father and his new wife.
    Stondon Massey is rural Essex at its poshest. “Derry” was a huge mock-Tudor affair with a sweeping drive, acres of lawn and its own tennis court. At one point Judith also had a flat in Kensington and some domestic staff to help out, a couple called José and Maria. It is odd, given how money expands one’s options, that Judith and Christopher should choose to stay in a house only ten miles from Brentwood, and Christopher’s first family.
    It must have been strange for the kids, commuting between Brentwood and Stondon Massey, so close geographically yet parsecs apart financially and socially. What do you make of breakfast with devilled kidneys served in a silver chafing dish when you are used to cornflakes? Perhaps children do not draw clear conclusions at the time. There is film of Douglas, a tall, gawky schoolboy in dreadful shorts and a tie, with Sue Adams and little Heather, all playing together in the huge garden of the house in Stondon Massey. Douglas runs around, arms and legs all over the place, throwing a ball for the infant Heather, who was round and blonde and smiling, and he shows a touching protectiveness towards the girls from both households. Sometimes, when Judith’s two older girls were home from school, all the children were together. You have to wonder if the children quite understood where they all came from. Rosemary recalls her confusion when she first met Christopher’s other kids:
     
    It probably wasn’t until after Christmas [1960] that my mother would have said to us, oh, by the way, Chris has some children and they are going to come on Saturday. It was quite bizarre—and I’d said, “Oh, right,” you know—in those days it was really sort of Andy Pandy. “Shall I make some sandwiches?” And I remember the first day we saw them, just looking at them. I remember where they were standing—very solemn, both of them. I don’t know, maybe I was very solemn too. And it was quite difficult to know—you know, what is the relationship?
     
    Christopher and Janet could not, or would not, bear to see each other so Grandmama Donovan helped in the mechanics of moving the children around for the weekends. Sometimes she and Judith would meet up at a bank in Ongar for a handover reminiscent of the Cold War spy exchanges, and indeed she and Judith struck up a good relationship. Karena remembers that Granny Donovan was quite often to be seen in “Derry.” Christopher refused to speak to Janet; their silence endured for decades. (When Sue Adams got married, it took a lot of negotiation to get Christopher to attend.)
    Douglas’s attitude to money, when he later made a lot of it, must have been influenced by his early knowledge of just how it bought comfort and goodies. Karena remembers her mother once remarked that Christopher and Douglas were far too alike to get on. Certainly Douglas shared with his father an utter lack of pragmatism, along with an awesome appetite for treats. At his memorial service he was retrospectively teased for once being found to have eight horrifically expensive cameras in the back of his car. But unlike his father, Douglas did not let his life pivot around money for its own sake; to him it was just a means to an end. Fun and access to interesting experiences were the main goals—and, being by nature delightfully generous, he was also keen that friends and loved ones should share such pleasures.
    Judith’s own considerable wealth was deployed unstintingly on behalf of her husband and, interestingly,
all
the children, including Christopher’s children by his first marriage. She set up a trust fund for all of them, with Christopher’s friend